Charter: Arbitrary Detention

Charter: Arbitrary Detention

Section 9 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned. This right is most often infringed when police stop and question people out driving in their car or walking down the street. Police will stop someone based solely on a hunch or speculation that the person may be involved in illegal activity based on the way they look or act. Law enforcement are required to have reasonable grounds to believe someone has committed, or is about to commit a criminal offence before they stop and investigate a person. a police officer having anything less than reasonable grounds when detaining somebody may amount to an unlawful or arbitrary detention. The cases below show examples of our lawyers uncovering the fact that police lacked the reasonable grounds to detain and investigate these individuals. In these cases, the evidence obtained during the course of the investigations were excluded from the evidence at trial. Most often, this would result in an acquittal for the accused. ***Click on the case name in order to read the full judgment***